Follow-up of patients treated by tang-kis (shamans) in Taipei, Taiwan will be carried out to determine (1) if indigenous treatment is effective, and (2) if so, how it works. Ethnomedical and biochemical evaluations of treatment of specific episodes of sickness will be compared, and comparisons will also be made for matched patient groups treated by shamans and Western-style doctors, in order to analyze how psychosocial and cultural factors influence therapeutic efficacy and its evaluation. Specific hypotheses based on a medical anthropological pilot study will be tested, including the hypothesis that indigenous healing is more effective than Western medical care in treating illness, but less effective in treating disease. The research attempts to integrate anthropological, clinical and epidemiological methods in an interdisciplinary study of the therapeutic outcomes (as evaluated by patients and researchers) of 200 patients from 5 shamans' shrines who fall into 4 sickness categories: (1) minimal, self-limited disease; (2) chronic illness with psychosocial management problems; (3) somatization; and (4) severe, acute medical and psychiatric diseases. Comparison is made with 120 matched patients treated by 3 Western-style doctors in the same local setting.